Instant (scratch-off) lottery games have become a time honored method of raising revenue for state and federal governments the world over. Traditional scratch-off and draw games have evolved over decades, supplying increasing revenue year after year. However, after decades of growth, the sales curves associated with traditional games seem to be flattening out with median sales per capita experiencing a decline. This flattening of lottery sales growth is typically attributed to a fixed base of consumers that routinely purchase lottery products with very few new consumers choosing to participate in the lottery marketplace. Various analyses of state lottery sales data tend to support the hypothesis that lotteries rely heavily on an existing consumer base and more specifically on lottery “super users.” Three states (Rhode Island, South Dakota and Massachusetts) had 2014 lottery sales that topped $700 per capita. While ten states had per capita sales below $100, per capita sales. All combined, state lotteries averaged almost $250 per capita in sales. Demographically speaking, this existing base of lottery consumers is aging, with younger consumers showing very little interest in participating in existing lottery offerings. Thus, the growth potentials for ever-increasing lottery sales are increasingly challenged by the saturation of the existing fixed base of consumers. Consequently, both lotteries and their service providers are presently searching for more marketable forms of gaming that would appeal to a broader consumer base.
In addition to flattening sales, a static lottery consumer base is often cited when state legislatures debate whether lotteries represent a form of exploitation of problem gamblers. For example, “Stop Predatory Gambling”, which advocates an end to state-sponsored gambling recently stated, “State lotteries have a business model that's based on getting up to 70 to 80 percent of their revenue from 10 percent of the people that use the lottery . . . .” In Minnesota, a pending bipartisan bill would require 25% of lottery billboards to be dedicated to a warning about the odds of winning and gambling addiction, as well as information on where problem gamblers can seek help.
This phenomenon of a relatively small percentage of the population responsible for a large majority of lottery sales is partially due to the commoditization of lottery tickets by ticket manufacturers. In the past decade, manufacturers of instant lottery tickets have developed techniques which enabled fixed plate produced color images to be printed as display and on top of (i.e., overprinted on) the scratch-off layers. Using this conventional printing method, the display and overprint images are stationary and do not change from one printing impression to the next during a single printing run—see e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,569,512 and 5,704,647. This, in turn, confines the instant lottery ticket product to high-volume print runs with very little experimentation in terms of theming and gaming experience due to the need to ensure that the vast majority of print runs sell out to ensure economic feasibility. Therefore, these high-volume print runs tend to be themed around well-established concepts that have been developed over years principally designed to accommodate “super users.”
Lottery ticket production involves variable information or variable indicia when designing the play styles and prize payout functions of the games; it is impractical to meet these requirements using conventional plate printing techniques such as flexographic to produce game play and validation information in the security areas hidden by the SOC of tickets. Far too many plate changes would be required to produce the vast amount of variable indicia in the security areas to complete a run that consisted of large volumes of tickets, rendering plate printing for this purpose not viable. Thus, to date, almost all lottery ticket variability has been confined to monochromatic variable indicia or two-spot color indicia imaged by drop-on-demand ink jet printers with the display and overprints portions being printed with fixed plates and therefore, mostly static from game to game.
While there has been some industry effort to advance instant lottery ticket printing technology with full color digital imaging (most notably: U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,720,421; 8,074,570; 8,342,576; and patent application publication Nos. US 2009/0263583; US 2010/0253063; US 2012/0267888; and US 2014/0356537); none of this effort has addressed the problem of dealing with printing on demand and distributed network printing of relatively small stylized print runs specifically targeted at differing demographics.
In an attempt to de-commoditize lottery tickets, appeal to a broader base, and increase sales, United States lotteries have moved towards producing games with more entertainment value that can be sold at a premium price. Ideally, these games would include process color indicia, display, and overprint imaging and should be economically produced in smaller volumes, thereby allowing for game experimentation and targeting of different demographic groups other than core players. However, as described above, lottery ticket manufacturers have developed infrastructures that primarily support large volume fixed plate display and overprint printing with monochromatic variable indicia produced at a small number of large print facilities.
For example, ten-dollar instant ticket games with higher paybacks and more ways to win now account for over $5 billion a year in United States lottery sales. But, limited by the fixed plate and high-volume restrictions enforced by current manufacturing techniques and practices, these higher priced instant games are still generic in nature and consequently are a minor percentage of overall game offerings with limited potential for assisting in consumer base diversification. In other words, the high-priced and high-volume nature of these games tends to drive the lotteries to generic, proven, type of play (i.e., appealing to existing player base) with very little experimentation and unique entertainment value relative to lower-priced instant tickets and consequently, does not attract many new consumers.
Moreover, as gaming technology and systems continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, numerous new types of games and products become available that tend to distance themselves from the one-size-fits-all and large-volume instant lottery ticket paradigm that has sustained the industry for decades. These gaming trends no longer support gaming to the masses; rather, differentiation through information is favored, with games tracking and targeting such concepts as: predictive value, frequency, average bet, product identification, small targeted audiences, etc. However, tracking and targeting games to these concepts necessitates segmenting the player base into smaller and smaller groups or pools with each group or pool too small to sustain large volume games by itself. Additionally, by concentrating lottery printing production in large secure facilities, the logistical challenges of distributing small game runs, in addition to production challenges, causes such games to be priced uneconomically such that they still resemble the standard instant ticket lottery product. Also, centralized production of large print runs inherently prohibits game spontaneity—e.g., seasonal tickets, greeting cards, collector cards, lottery tickets for specific chain stores, bowl game commemorative instant tickets celebrating the winning team in their home state, local high schools, etc.
Thus, it is highly desirable to develop instant ticket manufacturing techniques with more variable and dynamic appeal that provides methods of offering new gaming opportunities, particularly more customized and consequently smaller volume games. Ideally, these games should be printed over a distributed network, thereby enabling efficiencies in distribution as well as spontaneity. The present invention achieves these goals.